Free A Hard Day’s Fright by Casey Daniels

mournful groan. “It’s going to turn my heart to stone.”
    I sort of got that. After all, I had to spend my days at Garden View, too.
    Ariel was not a person I wanted to confide in, so rather than do that, I said, “It’s your own fault. If you hadn’t run away—”
    “If I ran away, it wouldn’t have been to Sandusky.” As if that tiny body of hers actually weighed six hundred pounds, she hauled herself out of the chair. “I would have gone someplace mysterious, like the vast expanses of Canada, where I could be alone with my thoughts. Or the deepest, darkest rain forest of South America, where I could get in touch with my artistic side by communing with nature. That, at least, would have fed my soul.”
    “I guess you should have thought of that before you opted for Sandusky.” Oh yeah, I smiled when I said this. Not that I was feeling particularly chipper, but according to Ella, Ariel was going through a phase that was all about angst. I knew nothing would mess with her head as much as smiling. “And now you’re paying the price. The office every day after school, huh?” I nodded at the backpack that was tossed in the corner. “How about you go into the conference room and do your homework.”
    “My mother is in the conference room,” she informed me. “She’s with Jim, her boss. Your boss.” Ariel looked at me through the curtain of her bangs, and in spite of the syrupy eye shadow and the black nail polish, she suddenly sounded very much like the little kid she was. “Wouldn’t you love to know what they’re meeting about?”
    To prove how much I didn’t care, I shrugged, and just in case Ariel didn’t get it, I was quick to add, “Whatever it is, I’ll find out soon enough.”
    “Oh, you will.” She nodded as vigorously as a teenager can who’s trying to pretend that every moment of her existence is unbearable. “But I know now. I saw a note from Jim. On my mother’s desk.”
    “I suppose you looked through my desk, too.” I actually wasn’t as upset about this as I tried to sound. I had the newest issue of Marie Claire in my top desk drawer. With any luck, Ariel had found it, and had paid attention to the article called “Fifteen-Minute Hairstyles.” Fifteen minutes, a bottle of shampoo, and a really good beautician…it could do wonders!
    “Your desk is boring.” This didn’t stop Ariel from perching on the edge of it. “You don’t have interesting notes on your desk. You know, like notes from Jim to my mother.”
    “Why don’t you go back in her office and look around some more.”
    Ariel’s shoulders dropped. “My mother…” There was that groan again. “She says I have to be with someone every single minute I’m here. She says someone has to watch me.” She harrumphed like only a fifteen-year-old can. “Like I’m a little kid or something.”
    Far be it from me to take anybody under my wing. Especially when that anybody is a body as pathetically miserable and as miserably pathetic as Ariel. Still, I couldn’t help but give it a try. Thanks to my soft spot for Ella, I was already dealing with one ghostly mystery I would rather have avoided. I wasn’t about to sit here and listen to her daughter diss her. The least I could do—for Ella’s sake and my own—was try to talk some sense into the girl.
    “You want to stop being treated like a little kid, stop acting like one,” I said, and I guess Ariel wasn’t used to anyone laying it on the line so bluntly because she shot me a look. “Oh, come off it!” I rolled my eyes. Juvenile, yes, but warranted in this situation. She needed to know that she didn’t have a lock on the melodrama. “You can’t pretend that disappearing for the weekend wasn’t dumb. It was. And it upset your mother. A lot. You know she had that friend who disappeared.”
    It was Ariel’s turn to roll her eyes. “That was about a million years ago.”
    “That doesn’t make it any easier for your mom to forget how painful it